izigame.me

-This is Fair Play Labs' second attempt at a brawler-style game. It is all-in-all a step in the right direction after playing the first game. The gameplay is much smoother. Combat and levels, for better or for worse, becomes quite similiar to a smash you can get on a non-nintendo console. It eventually got to a point where I refer to Jenny as a Meta-Knight agility fighter, Lucy Loud as Pokemon Trainer with 3 mode mids, Riptar as a better Bowser heavyweight, Jimmy Neutron's basement is Pokemon Statium, and a temple-like stage, etc. There's an sub optimal target smash too. The game has clear inspiration from Smash with two major exceptions.
One improvement is the similarities in light/heavy/special attacks across all characters. A lot of fighting games seem to give character all different movesets, but no matter which character you choose in Brawl they are all similiar. Where they differ is in how well those movesets string together, like a fighting game where you go light-light-heavy-heavy.
Spongebob prefers going special-light to a heavy, while Lucy Loud might prefer doing heavy to rebounc an enemy to special light to string into offense. This was really fun to explore without the frustration of finding a fighting game character can't do this move.
Another improvement is the slime-o-meter. Rather than a smash ball to fight, there is a meter that slowly fills up overtime during combat to give you option to strengthen base moves or fill a "final smash". This can be amusing or strategic for longer games.
-The game also features two single player modes: campaign and arcade. In campaign, you enter a brawl rogue-lite where you go through 12 matches up to 3 times on randomly generated maps. Matches can be minigames, upgrades, shops, enemy mobs, or CPU brawl opponents, the latter two being the most common. At the end of each map, you face a boss with a patterned moveset. If you lose, you start over but get to keep green and purple slime to buy upgrades (WHICH YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD DO EVEN IF YOU DIE ON THE FIRST STAGE AS THE GAME IS VERY UNFORGIVING AND AUTOSAVES). (You can also save and quit if you're doing poorly to restart the match). Arcade is a mini version of this, but you only have 12 stages to fight CPU bosses and Vlad Plasmius as the final boss.
In the campaign, Vlad Plasmius from Danny Phantom has kidnapped various Nickelodeon characters and wants to brainwash them to do his bidding. It's up to the brawler and the Clockwork, a time-manipulating character from the same franchise,to stop Vlad. I write this not to give spoilers but to note that you should ideally play characters from the same franchise (Danny Phantom or Ember) to get unique dialogue you would not get otherwise.
-Single player matches give the opportunities to face CPU opponents. You can do this brawler style or a gauntlet style. thee CPU opponent is generally fun. However, note that it is still not a human and there are times you can cheese the same move and win. The CPU tends to block anytime a projectile is thrown, so you can use this to your advantage. Spongebob has this weird move where you can special light and lock your opponents in a near infinite damage distributor. And sometimes the CPU will just jump into a pit and die or just hang on a ledge waiting for you to hit them and die.
-Online multiplayer is OK. Switch to USA. Reviews and Reddit posit that Europe is dead, or at least everyone migrates to the US. There's few toxic players or people vying to be t1. It's just good fun from what I played..
-As for the $50 price tag.... considering all the fun this is and how it basically doubles the fun of 1, it's well worth the price.
I got this on sale, and would recommend getting this the moment it's on sale, even if it's just $10 off.
The first game felt like polished IP insertion into a popular game genre, like a lot of Nickelodean games.
This feels like a game I could continue to play and repeatedly challenge friends to play if they can ever put down Smash.
Released in 2023, the game having $50 price tag is in a weird place. In one regard, it's $10 lower than the AAA price then. But that's also $20 less than the AAA price in 2024, at which is which this game is well worth the value.
You can feel the effort the developers put into this, and there are plenty less bugs here than in the previous game.
And I cannot stress this enough; it is a game you can easily sink dozens of hours into, and feel satisfied sinking a dozen hours into.
-One criticism I have is the game is not optimized and I wish there were a way to lower settings.
I am playing on a mid-high 2021 gaming PC, and the game still takes a while to load and lags during loading.
The same issue is on the switch.
Gameplay is fine.
-Another criticism that only matters to those who played the first game is that some previous fighters were removed. Hugh Neutron was removed but his NPC is in the Powerup menu, which hurts more when you see they kept his animations. This is only something to be upset over if you played the previous games.
-I give this game an 8.5/10. I really want to recommend this, and I spent a while writing this review to get my thoughts out. There's things I like about this but don't love. It's probably me not enjoying the Viacom era nick starting in the 2010s, it's a part of me that's a little disappointed it went from being original in 1 to being a smashlike in 2, but a very good smashlike.
Buy it if it's on sale or a friend wants to play.
If you have desire to play as a Nickelodeon character or a smashlike without having a Switch that's more ingenuity than Brawlhalla or Rivals or Aether's base game, buy this.
It's not something you'll want to refund.